Wide Awake
by DinerGuy
Summary: 2018 reboot. "Okay, Rick? Breathe. First off, everyone's alive. But, well, it's Thomas. He… he was taken." - - The phone call with T.C. was all Rick needed to cut his trip to Chicago short and rush back to Hawaii on the next flight out.


_A/N: __This is what happens when you give me the prompt "Insomnia" and then leave me to my own devices with Frankie McStein as my only supervision._

_Standard disclaimers apply._

* * *

When the power was finally restored, Rick was more than a little relieved. Sure, the cold had been a little bit of a shock, with how he'd been living in Hawaii for years now, but he'd been able to manage it. Plus, his grandmother's house had plenty of fireplaces, so it hadn't been too unbearable. The worst part was the stir-crazy gaggle of nieces and nephews who had started complaining less than a day in that they were bored. They could only keep themselves occupied in the snow for so long, and the loss of electricity had meant no video games or television.

They'd all lost their phones after about a day or so. Even on a full charge, a battery couldn't last forever. Most of the adults in the house had switched their devices off, opting to conserve battery in case of an emergency, and resorted to old-fashioned entertainment like board games or conversation.

It had been close to a week between then and the power finally being restored, and Rick was expecting a barrage of messages from The Ohana Thread as he sprawled on the guest bed, plugged his phone into the outlet, and waited for it to turn on. He'd previously texted his friends about the impending storm and what it would probably mean for phone service and battery power. If he had to guess, they'd probably spent the last days spamming him with beach photos and updates on the current weather on Oahu. Which was fair; he'd probably do the same to any of them if the roles were reversed.

_"Some vacation," _Thomas had replied to Rick's text that first day. _"You know, people come to Hawaii to get away from weather like that."_

So, when his screen finally lit up, Rick was not at all surprised to see hundreds of unread text messages. It honestly wasn't that different from the mornings he woke up to find at least two of the others had been up much late into the night and had gotten into some sort of involved discussion—usually over something trivial, too.

What did puzzle him were the numerous missed calls and voicemails. His friends did know he was snowed in, and he'd made sure there were plenty of instructions and clear lines of communication for his employees at La Mariana while he was gone. So who had called him so many times in the past two days?

Shaking his head, he debated listening to the voicemails first but then decided to read his texts. The surprising thing was the number of unread texts in separate threads with just T.C., Higgins, or Kumu that weren't part of The Ohana Thread… and why didn't there seem to be a single message from Thomas?

The minute his app opened and he caught sight of the top two message threads, his heart dropped.

Jules: _"Call T.C. or me as soon as you get this."_

T.C.: _"Dude, I know you're snowed in, but you need to call me back ASAP!"_

He scrambled to press the button for T.C.'s contact so fast his fingers nearly slipped. The line rang a few times before connecting, and Rick didn't even give his friend a chance to speak up before he jumped in.

"What's going on, man? I've got, like, two hundred unread messages and dozens of voicemails. What happened? Is everyone okay?"

_"Rick,"_ T.C. said slowly, and Rick immediately caught his friend's tone.

"What happened? Who's hurt and how bad? And why'd you answer so fast? It's, what, five in the morning there?" Rick knew that was the only reason T.C. had to sound like that. His mind was spinning through all of the worst-case scenarios, and he was already wondering how soon he could get a flight out.

_"Okay, Rick? Breathe. First off, everyone's alive. But, well, it's Thomas. He… he was taken."_

Rick's stomach clenched. "But he's okay?"

The pause before T.C. continued wasn't lost on him. _"We got him back. But, Rick, these guys who took him, they wanted info. And they used sleep deprivation to try to make him talk."_

The words hit Rick like a punch to the gut. He was no stranger to the torture technique; their captors in the POW camp had used it more than once. But Rick shook his head to clear the memories; he couldn't afford to go down that path right now. He needed to know how Thomas was, needed to get on the next plane back home. That was what he needed to focus on.

_"Rick, how soon can you get here?" _T.C. asked, voice tight with emotion.

"You're reading my mind, buddy. I was just wondering that, too," Rick replied

T.C. cleared his throat. _"They used a few ways to keep him awake, Rick."_

Memories of a baton smashing into him every time he started to drift off regardless of how hard he was fighting it flashed across Rick's mind. "What… what do you mean?" He wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he had to. He had to know what had happened to his friend, even if just to know that Thomas had survived.

_"Rick, they had videos. Of you. And they told him they could get to you if he didn't stay awake, if he didn't answer their questions. That you'd be hurt if he fell asleep at all."_

Rick had been sure he couldn't get any worse news, but he'd been wrong. "They _what?_ How?"

_"Not sure yet," _T.C. replied. _"Katsumoto thinks they have a contact in Chicago; he's trying to coordinate with the police there. But, look, man, it really did a number on our boy. He's convinced you're still in danger; we can't get him to relax enough to sleep. Every time he starts to drift off, his mind seems to remember you're in trouble."_

The guilt—even though he knew none of it was his fault—was tearing at Rick. "I'll be back as soon as I can," he replied quickly, not really knowing how else to respond. "The news said the airport resumed operations as soon as the snow quit falling."

_"Good," _T.C. replied. _"We've been trying our best here, Rick, even showing him stuff on our phones of you, but videos only go so far when his mind's been conditioned to think of them as a threat."_

Rick swallowed. He could only imagine… "Can I talk to him?"

_"I'm headed back to the hospital in a few; I'll text you from there. You can video-chat him if he's up to it. The docs are concerned because he's running on almost no sleep and is reacting badly to any meds they've tried so they don't want to try to sedate him again." _T.C. sounded weary. _"It's been over two days since we got him back, but I haven't seen him sleep a wink since we found him."_

Honestly, Rick was surprised he hadn't crushed his phone yet with how tightly he was holding it. "I'll text you as soon as I have a flight time confirmed."

Within three hours, Rick was at the airport, waiting for his boarding group to be called. He clutched the boarding pass in his hand like it might escape if he let it go for even a second. It had almost been too good to be true that there was a flight with open seats leaving so soon.

The minute he'd hung up with T.C., he'd called customer service for his airline and told them he had a family emergency and needed to change his return trip to that day, as soon as they could get him out. He didn't care how many layovers; he just wanted whatever route would get him back in Honolulu the quickest. The woman on the phone had been apologetic that there weren't many planes leaving that afternoon, but Rick hadn't cared about multiple options. He just needed a flight, _any _flight that would get him home. He hadn't even blinked at the cost for updating his booking, just double-checked road closures and then agreed to the updated itinerary the agent offered him.

Rick had shot off a quick text to The Ohana Thread with his new flight times the minute he had them, then threw his belongings into his suitcase with little regard for proper packing techniques before rushing to explain to his family that there was an emergency back in Hawaii. While only some of them had ever met Rick's military buddies, they all knew the names and how important the men were to Rick. So, the minute he mentioned Thomas was in trouble, his uncle was on his feet and offering to drive Rick to O'Hare.

And now, Rick was tapping his foot anxiously, repeatedly checking his phone as he waited for boarding to begin. He'd always appreciated the power outlets that were scattered around airport waiting areas, but he never knew just how important they were until now. His battery had only charged about halfway with the frenetic activity that had occurred at the house when the power came back on, and then he'd only gotten it a little closer to fully charged using the adapter in his uncle's pickup. Plus, even though he had a battery pack, he'd used a lot of it during the power outage, and it wouldn't last him long at the moment.

When his phone buzzed with a new text, Rick nearly jumped out of his skin. He glanced at the notification. It was from T.C., and Rick let out a sigh of relief as he read the words, _"Can you vid chat?"_

Rick didn't even respond to the text, just tapped the screen to initiate a call. His stomach was doing somersaults as he waited for the line to connect.

_"Hey, man!" _T.C.'s face appeared on the screen, and Rick smiled as his friend's voice came through his earbuds. _"You got a flight."_

"Yeah." Rick nodded. "First one I could find. I should be there by ten or eleven tonight. How's Tommy?"

T.C. gave him a look through the camera that Rick immediately understood. _"Still hasn't slept much. Apparently he dozed off for a few minutes but… he woke up pretty quick."_

It hadn't escaped Rick's notice that T.C. looked absolutely exhausted as well, but he didn't bring it up. Rick knew he'd be exactly the same if he were there himself.

"Can I talk to him?"

_"Yeah, I checked, and it's fine. We're all hoping this helps; kind of running out of things to try at this point other than just straight up knocking him over the head."_ He chuckled.

The camera shook then as T.C. moved, and, when it came back into focus, Rick was staring at the shaky image of a hospital room ceiling. He could hear T.C.'s voice in the background, low and muffled, and then another answering voice that he couldn't quite make out.

And then T.C. moved the phone again, and the picture shifted and then cleared.

_"Rick?" _Thomas's face filled the screen.

"Hey, buddy. It's me." Rick smiled reassuringly at the camera, trying to put as much enthusiasm and encouragement into the call as he could. It was even more difficult than he had expected.

Even with the grainy quality of the video call, Rick could clearly see the shadows under his friend's eyes, heavy with the indication that Thomas hadn't slept in way too long. The other man's face was drawn and thinner than Rick remembered it being even just a week before when Thomas had dropped him off at the airport, and even Magnum's normally tan skin seemed pale and sickly.

_"Rick, you're okay…" _Thomas didn't sound as if he believed it.

Rick swallowed and nodded, forcing the smile to remain in place. "Yeah, I'm here. I'm safe. I'm actually on my way to see you right now."

_"R… really? You're okay?"_

"Yeah! Of course. I'd have been back sooner except for a snowstorm that decided to knock out the power at the house."

Thomas nodded slowly, and Rick found himself once again flashing back to the camp. There had been more than one occasion when he'd been forced to stay awake for so long that he'd lost all track of time, but that wasn't what he was remembering then. Instead, he was seeing the times he'd had to wait for what had felt like an eternity and then some for Thomas to return. The SEAL had been so worn and weary when he'd been dumped back into the cell with the others, flinching away when they'd tried to help him and jerking awake with hoarse, terrified screams when he did finally start to fall asleep. Rick remembered sitting with Magnum, taking turns with the others in talking their friend through the nightmarish episodes that first long night, and he knew T.C. had to be having the same memories—most likely in even greater detail, as he was experiencing it firsthand while Rick had been completely oblivious to everything that was happening back home.

_"It's… not snowing here,"_ Thomas said slowly. _"Too warm."_

Chuckling, Rick replied, "Oh, trust me; I know. I'd much rather have been surfing the past few days than snowed in."

They continued their conversation, with frequent pauses as Thomas tried to gather words, tilting his head at times and his attention drifting away from the call at others. T.C. and Higgins were somewhere beside him; Rick could hear them talking quietly in the background and periodically to Thomas as needed.

The number of times Magnum asked if Rick was really okay broke Rick's heart. He knew what T.C. had told him, about how he'd been used as leverage against his friend, but it was still a shock to see his normally self-assured friend so withdrawn and uncertain about everything. The sooner Rick was on the ground on Oahu, the better.

They talked until Rick's group was called to board, but he kept the call open as he gathered his things and headed to stand in line. He glanced up once to see the man in front of him giving him a dirty look but just turned back to the video call. If worry over Rick being hurt for it was keeping Thomas from sleeping, then Rick was going to spend every possible second on the call.

He only briefly looked up to smile politely at the gate agent as she checked his ID and boarding pass, then he turned back to his phone and continued the conversation.

When Rick was finally forced to end the call out of necessity because of takeoff, he was pleased to see that Thomas looked a little more relaxed than he had at the start of the call. It wasn't as much progress as Rick would have liked, but the tension had eased somewhat, and Magnum's voice had actually sounded just a little lighter in their last few exchanged words than he had when he'd first tentatively taken the phone from T.C.

What killed Rick was not being able to continue the conversation during the flight. It didn't matter if the plane had WiFi or not; they weren't allowed to make video or phone calls while in the air. He'd hoped to at least be able to stay in touch with his friends via text while en route, but that didn't seem like it was going to be possible either.

He honestly hadn't even thought of checking if the planes he'd booked had WiFi; the one he'd come over on had offered it as an add-on for a few dollars, but this plane didn't even offer that. Rick gladly would have paid as much as needed for an internet connection, especially after seeing the expression on Tommy's face the moment he'd said he had to go. But there was nothing that could be done about it, and this had been the first flight back to the islands.

He needed to get back, and departure times and weather fronts had been at the top of his priority list, not WiFi. Getting to Hawaii as soon as possible was the single most important factor; Tommy needed him in person, and Rick was not going to let his friend down. Not again.

Rick swallowed and clenched his fist as he stared across the man sitting beside him to look out of the window. As much as it was killing Rick not to be able to talk to his friend who was clearly in distress and needed him, he knew it had to be hurting Thomas that much more.

He just hoped their call, less than an hour though it had been, would be enough to get Thomas through until he could call again during his layover. After that, it would be hours before he hit the ground at HNL, and Rick didn't want to think about his friend still refusing to sleep through all that time. According to the timeline as Rick understood it from T.C., it had to be nearing five days since the last time Thomas would have slept. And that was assuming the man hadn't been on some case for his P.I. business beforehand that had already thrown off his sleep schedule.

It was a very long twelve hours before Rick was watching out of the window as the plane descended onto the runway. His plane leaving Chicago had been delayed after boarding, something about ice, and that had meant his layover in LA hadn't been as long as originally planned. That meant he'd had even less time to talk to Thomas during that break in travel, although he'd texted T.C. the moment he'd been allowed to use his phone.

T.C. had informed Rick that their friend still had yet to sleep. The call earlier in the day had helped some, but Magnum was still barely able to rest. He'd dozed off for a few minutes, which was more than he'd done since they'd found him, but it had been a restless nap full of tossing and turning that had finally woken him up.

As soon as he could, Rick had been on another video call with his friend. He then spent the entire time walking to his new gate and waiting for the next plane talking to Thomas, who still looked absolutely drained. Yet again, Rick had spent much of the call reassuring his friend that he was fine and that he was on his way home.

And then the flight had boarded, and Rick had been forced to hang up, and he'd spent the entire trip caught up in thoughts of what must have been going through his friend's mind the past few days. Guilt over allowing himself to be used against his friend the way he had, memories of the camp, knowledge of just how torturous the time Thomas had spent in the hands of his captors must have been… And every time Rick felt himself starting to drift off due to the weariness that traveling always brought with it, he found himself thinking about Thomas being unable to sleep for days and was wide awake again.

So, by the time the passengers finally disembarked down the jet bridge, Rick's eyes were burning with exhaustion, but he didn't slow down. He couldn't. And as much as he wanted to call his friends again, talk to Thomas again, his battery was desperately low and he couldn't do much more than text the others that he'd arrived before it shut off on him.

Retrieving his suitcase from the baggage carousel, Rick sprinted outside and jumped in the first available taxi he could find, blurting out the hospital information the moment the driver stepped out to help load his luggage into the trunk. Thankfully, the other man seemed to recognize Rick's panicked urgency and wasted no time getting him there.

T.C. had sent him the room number earlier, and Rick rushed up as quickly as he could. Ignoring the looks from staff and other visitors as he rolled his suitcase behind him, Rick nearly ran down the halls until he'd arrived at the right door.

Panting, he pulled up in front of it and quickly knocked. The door flew open, revealing a tired- but relieved-looking T.C. who wordlessly stepped back so Rick could enter. The expression on the other man's face had told Rick everything he needed to know, and he wasted no time in dropping his bag by the wall and rushing across the room.

Rick glanced at Higgins, who had jumped up from the chair next to the bed when he'd walked in. She was smiling, clearly happy to see him, and she reached out to put a hand on his arm as he moved beside her. She looked as tired as T.C., with shadows smudged under her eyes and lines crinkling along the edges of her face that told of how little she'd been resting recently.

Guilt once again washed over Rick even as he returned her smile. She and T.C. had undoubtedly put in hours looking for Thomas and then stayed with him throughout his whole ordeal so far in the hospital. And what had Rick been doing but relaxing with family and getting plenty of sleep?

"Rick?" The quiet voice from the bed pulled Rick's attention from Jules to Thomas.

"Hey, yeah, it's me," Rick replied quickly, moving the last few steps to stand next to the bed. "I'm here."

Thomas looked even worse in person than he had on the phone. The dark circles under his eyes and the ashen pallor of his face left no doubt in Rick's mind that his friend was in desperate need of sleep. The pale blue hospital gown and bright white sheets did nothing to help, and the numerous wires and monitors—including the blood pressure and heart rate readouts that definitely were not normal—made Rick's stomach clench as he realized just how bad off Thomas was.

"You… are you really here?"

Rick swallowed and nodded as he looked Thomas in the eyes. His friend looked so uncertain, so hesitant, and Rick put a hand on his friend's arm.

Thomas flinched, and Rick immediately pulled his hand back as he searched his friend's face. There was an anxious mix of fear and hope, and Thomas's face wrinkled as he regarded Rick dubiously.

"It's okay, bud. It's me," Rick said, even as he shot a quizzical look at Higgins next to him.

Her face was sad as she leaned over to whisper in his ear. "He's hallucinated you a few times already."

T.C. hadn't told him that. Rick turned to raise an eyebrow at the other man standing near the foot of the bed, who just shrugged. Although… it was probably fair, Rick had to admit. He couldn't imagine if he had known that information when he was already doing his best to get back as soon as possible.

So, instead, Rick just sighed and turned back to Thomas. He reached out a hand slowly but didn't touch him this time, just held it out encouragingly. "Don't worry, T.M. I'm really here; those guys didn't hurt me."

Thomas blinked at him for a moment, then hesitantly took Rick's hand, as if he wasn't sure if it would suddenly vanish when he touched it.

"See?" Rick said gently as their fingers brushed. "I'm here." He closed his grip and gave Magnum's hand a reassuring squeeze. "I'm here, and I'm not leaving you again."

When Kumu stopped by an hour later, she paused just inside the door with a smile as she took in the scene in front of her.

Rick was in the chair next to Thomas's hospital bed, slumped over with his head resting on top of the blankets. His arm was outstretched, his hand holding his buddy's. For his part, Thomas was leaning to the right to accommodate his grip on Rick's hand, his head barely on his pillows as he had shifted to keep his friend in reach. Both men were sound asleep, their eyes closed and chests rising and falling steadily. A few quiet snores escaped Rick, but the sound didn't seem to bother either of them.

It didn't seem to bother the other two occupants of the room either. T.C. and Higgins were sprawled on the small couch against the wall, both also sound asleep. She was tucked up against his side, her head resting on his shoulder, he with his arm draped over her.

Kumu just shook her head and quietly moved to the small closet to pull out the extra blankets the nurses had left for them. Tucking one over Rick, she moved to spread the others over Higgins and T.C., then headed off in search of an extra chair.

And, if she decided to stay awake a little longer in order to take up a position by the door and sternly warn off every nurse who tried to enter, none of the four would ever know.

* * *

_Fin._


End file.
